Fat Force: Because we love Jelly Doughnuts too much.

About to start another bulking routine. Lean-gains time. SMUGFACE.

Something folks need to bear in mind is that fixing up your diet should be at the top of your list. You can bust your ass at the gym nonstop, but if you're eating terribly, then your progress will be almost non-existent. A pretty accurate estimate from personal experience (and from speaking with others) is that probably 75% of your progress depends upon your diet. I know a few folks who eat cleanly, but are pretty sedentary (WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS ) and still lose weight. It isn't as fast as those who are working out, and the end result will leave you skinny-fat or looking like Skeletor, but it works. I still encourage folks here to pick up heavy stuff, however.

Back on topic, though: there are countless folks I've seen over the years who talk and talk and talk about their workout routine, but when you ask them about nutrition, they clam up or are paying little-to-no attention to it. It's kinda like supplementing: it's okay to an extent (although there's a lot of snakeoil on that front), but you need to get the basics down first: your diet. Once that's done, get a basic workout plan laid out. Once you've done that for a while and are confident with it, THEN you can micromanage stuff. While still talking about it, don't dump money on supplementing. Basic stuff I recommend? Fish-oil, maybe some green caps (for extra vitamins), whey, and casein. Whey and Casein are different protein powder sources, where Whey is ideal for post-workout (Whey peels rubber through your system. If your body isn't starving for protein after a hard workout, then it won't get much use out of it. Casein limps itself through your system slowly and is good for meal replacement in general).

Ladies, don't avoid free-weights. Speaking as someone who has done bulking a few times in the past (and is a GUY), you have to be TRYING to pull it off. Without hitting chemicals and meticulously tailoring their lifestyle around it, ladies won't get huge. Plus, regular loading and lifting helps reduce the possibility of developing osteoperosis (which has been on the rise for ladies in recent years), so that's another plus to it. It's good for your health, will help make you look pretty awesome, and is good fun in general. Way better than just being a treadmiller 4 lyfe.

On the dieting front, folks are brainwashed in to "whelp, lower calories and I'll lose weight". That's not exactly the whole truth, actually. If you're eating too little, feel like crap, and are losing weight, then you are most likely losing muscle. When you eat too little, your body will start going to the muscle before fat. Eating at a caloric deficit is what you want to do in most cases, but you need to hit a few bases:

1) Get somewhere around 0.5-1.0g per pound of Lean Body Mass (LBM) of Protein daily. The actual protein figure gets scooted around a lot, but try to get at least 100g if you want to dumbfire it. Folks can be pretty bad at guessing their LBM, so that should be okay-ish.
2) Past that, structure your diet. Are you going low-fat or low-carb? A basic, cookie-cutter low-fat diet is a 40/40/20% P/C/F breakdown. Low-carb is generally under 50g of carbs per day, although many settle at sub-30g once they hit a groove. Also, if folks want to respond with a "hr hr gonna heart attack urself on locarb", go die in a fire or something. There's so much inaccuracy, bro-science, perpetuated misinformation, and misleading on health in general that it's maddening. Low-carb is definitely a victim of this.

While on the topic of bro-science, the whole "eat five times a day yadda yadda" thing is myth. If anything, it's to keep you from getting too hungry. On the flip-side, intermittent fasting (eating your full day's intake within a 6-8hr window) does work, but that's something different entirely.

Also, spot-reduction is bull. What's spot reduction? It's talk about folks using, say, a stairmaster to "tone mah glutes". Know what happens when you use a stairmaster? You work out your legs and glutes. Your body doesn't burn fat that way. If you're eating properly and have a good fitness regimen, your body will burn fat where it damn well pleases. Case-in-point, for guys, you might have cases where a fella's six-pack is visible around 15% bodyfat, whereas there'll be a case where a second person needs to hit 11% for that visibility. This ties in to genetic and dumb luck.

I could go on and on. The first thing: fix your diet. If you want meaningful changes, viewing a diet as a short-term fix is setting you up for failure. This is a lifestyle change and should be approached as such. Second: develop your workout. Strictly cardio is fine, but I really recommend weight-lifting for BOTH genders.

Starting off is the worst thing, because people will slug the same BS pseudo-science in your face they heard on TV yesterday morning on some random commercial. There is a ridiculous amount of bull that folks see as gospel, and many of these are why losing weight seems to be so freaking hard or impossible for people. Losing weight is NOT hard. Getting started and moving past the maddening smokescreen folks have set up around it is. Once you're past that, you're golden.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

That's the problem -- they have opinions. Not fact from personal experience or from seeing others address those issues. Folks spout these opinions and other folks latch on to it ("oh yeah I heard that from so-and-so") and before you know it, EVERYONE MUST DO THAT. The whole "toning" spiel or eating X-number of meals every X-number of hours crap; if you go on to some bro-lletin board like Bodybuilding.com, folks latch on to those like crazy. In those cases, even if you've got some guy at a low bodyfat and is in his early 20s or so, he's trim IN SPITE of that. They will take a step back and say "well, I'm fit, so I'm doing everything right. Everyone should do this." Then folks get in to stupid micromanagings and chasing ghosts (ie: NO-XPLODE BEFORE EVERY WORKOUT. PARA-WORKOUT BCAAs. DO IT OR YOU WON'T GET SWOLEOSIS). It's not something I like talking about much, but I was a hefty fellow when I was younger and in to my early college years, so I'm speaking from experience on this front. I've also advised and helped buddies/family members trim up with good results.

Also, it isn't always a case of someone eating too much. If you consume a large amount of fats and carbs at the same time (carbs causing an insulin spike, making your body want to store fat. Fat being abundant gets snagged), even if you keep your calories to a restricted level, you can still pack on weight. Lots of folks are fat simply due to running in to this wall; not due to "lol he's fat because he eats too much". Fat person eats far less, sticks to straight-up boring food in general (ie: "health food" or living off of boring-ass salads), and they end up lacking in energy, making zero progress, and end up bailing on it entirely. Then folks once again go "lol fatty fat fat".

On the topic of some "health foods": take a look at the vast majority of readily-available snacks-and-foods. If you even go the simplest method of going low-fat, many of those foods compensate for a lack of fat (or loss of good flavor) by packing it full of sugar. This is why cooking your own stuff ends up being better for you, because it doesn't have extra stuff crammed in. I'm not talking about crazy voodoo mystery ingredients (WHAT IS THIS. IT HAS A WEIRD NAME. IT MUST BE MAKING ME FAT), but rather sugars being tucked in.

If you go low-fat, you remove fat from the equation. Your insulin spikes won't lead to fat storage. If you go low-carb and remove carbs from the equation, you don't have crazy insulin spikes, meaning you won't store fat. Regardless of what you do, whether it's head on fitday and build every meal, plan your daily intake, low-fat, low-carb, etc: CUT OUT SUGAR. READ LABELS. You would be surprised at how that shit works its way in to things. Also, if you go low-fat, don't be afraid of fats (saturated, mono, poly, etc. Trans is still bad, though, brah). Nuts and eggs are awesome foods; don't you dare neglect 'em. Oh, that reminds me: dietary cholesterol fears in foods are unwarranted. Ignore it. Cholesterol within your body is regulated by your overall diet quality, not by the fact that you just ate two eggs. I once ate one of my ginormous plates of scrambled eggs in front of someone who sided with this, and he freaked the hell out about it :V

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